One year you are the future saviour of a storied NHL franchise, the next you’re just a recognizable name on a team’s depth chart.
Welcome to the topsy-turvey world of Justin Pogge.
Just a year ago, Pogge arrived in Toronto as a national hero neatly wrapped in the Canadian flag….
With the opening of training camp just three weeks away, there is scarcely any buzz regarding Pogge when the subject of the Leafs’ goaltending situation comes up.

“I first became friends with him when I was a boy with the Canadiens,” [Montreal Canadiens physician Dr. David] Mulder recalls.
“I got to know him with Toe Blake and (one-time Canadiens scout) Ron Caron when I was looking after the junior Canadiens. When Sam fell ill, his disease was outside my realm, but I sort of directed him to people who treated him here at the Montreal General.
“One thing that always stood out with my relationship with Sam is I always thought his intensity was only matched by his loyalty. He was very loyal to people he knew. He came back to see us when he had serious medical problems, but he was more than that to me. He was a mentor in many other ways.
“We had many talks about being a general manager ... about meeting people,” Mulder said. “I learned an awful lot from Sam. On practical life lessons, you couldn’t have a better teacher than Sam Pollock.”

The Mike Peca saga will end tomorrow.
Don Meehan, the agent for the free-agent center, who the Rangers had in for a physical and talks with brass last week, said his client will choose Tuesday about which team he’ll play for this season.
“He’ll make a decision (Tuesday),” Meehan said during a brief phone call last night of Peca, 33, who played just 35 games last seaon after breaking his right leg in late December while skating for the Maple Leafs.“It’s down to a few teams.”

Asked whether Sather wants to sign Peca, agent Don Meehan replied: “I’ve been trying to figure that out. I’ve tried to reach him (yesterday and Sunday) and can’t. And I’m working with time constraints now. I’ve got to find out where he stands.
“We’re probably going to force the issue by (today). If I can’t reach him (today), we’ll just go our separate way.”

There could be other compelling reasons for the league choosing ESPN and ESPN2 over NBC.
Although the NHL would lose carriage on a main broadcasting network by opting for ESPN over NBC, it would renew its relationship with the most powerful sports channel in North America.
Exposure on ESPN’s SportsCenter, which dropped 28 per cent after 2005, would increase. And the constant scrutiny of the NHL’s paltry U.S. ratings would largely disappear. Cable audience figures do not receive as much attention in the U.S. media as those of broadcasters.
Everything is speculative that this point.
ESPN may have interest. NBC isn’t planning an exit strategy quite yet.

Despite rumors on the Internet and in publications, Tallon said he hadn’t “talked to anyone” recently about potential free agents or trades.
So no Pavel Kubina?
“Nope.”
Danny Markov?
“Nope.”
Tony Amonte?
“Nope.”
But Tallon hasn’t been idly spending his time on the golf course; he just returned from a week in Europe on a scouting trip.
“We’re going to see how training camp goes and see what we have,” Tallon said. “We never stop listening to any deal if it makes sense to improve our team. But it’s kind of quiet right now.”

Boulton and McCarthy took turns in a flight simulator, which Boulton said was a great experience.
“It’s exactly how you feel if you were flying the plane with the joystick. We could shoot stuff, take it down to ground level and fly through buildings,” Boulton said. “We probably crashed every ten seconds.”
The whole experience was a sobering reminder for the Canadian native that while he and teammates are picking up their level of training here shortly, there’s a much more serious training operation going on not too far from Philips Arena.
“Your really appreciate what they do for our country. It’s an eye opener to see the every day operations and how much work they do,” Boulton said.

Now, the owners’ catchphrase seems to be Do What We Want or Kiss the Team Goodbye. Kind of catchy, don’t you think?
This may all turn out to be a wonderful plan that could work out for the team and the taxpayers. The Predators may enjoy a long and happy life in Tennessee and host many Stanley Cup parades.
Or it could all turn to dust.
Which makes you wonder why the NHL’s other owners would want to venture down this road at all—not when they’ve been down similar roads with other cash-strapped owners too often in the past, not when there are more stable, attractive offers on the table.

I’m not sure why, but I’m always drawn to the offensive storylines each season presents—contrary thinking for a former goalie, I know—and to looking at the state of the Original Six franchises. Maybe if you replace “former” with “old” goalie, you’ll get to the root here, but anyway, here are some of the things I hope happen during the 2007-08 season:
Original Six Prominence: With the Rangers making the bold offseason signings of Chris Drury and Scott Gomez, they should be in the mix atop the Eastern Conference all season long.

In order to get a closer look at how the NHL’s salary structure is evolving, I took the 20-man rosters of all 30 teams from two time periods — early in the 2003-04 season and at the end of the regular season of 2006-07, this past campaign — and ran that 600-player sample through a spreadsheet.
So, what’s the difference between salaries prelockout and postlockout?

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